“Exponents of a Higher Civilization:” The Chinese Educational Mission

UHP Staff

Boys on Arrival in the US, Connecticut Historical Society

“A visitor to the City of Hartford...will be likely to meet on the street groups of Chinese boys, in their native dress, though somewhat modified, and speaking their native tongue, yet seeming, withal, to be very much at home.”Joseph H. Twichell, 1878

In 1871, a new red signboard appeared on a building in Foochow Road in Shanghai. English speakers, whose knowledge of Chinese was limited, translated the sign literally reading it as “Go-out Ocean after Road General Office.” But the building had a more prosaic English name: The Chinese Education Mission.

In the mid-nineteenth century, China had been rocked by a series of rebellions including most notably the Taiping Rebellion, a civil war which had led to an uprising against China’s ruling dynasty. Believing that western technology could provide the Chinese government with the ability to quash potential rebellions and to push back against the aggression of western nations, Zeng Guofan (曾國藩), a Chinese official, recommended that “a number of intelligent youths be selected and sent to the various nations of the West to be trained in the technical arts.” Originally, the Chinese government was prepared to send young boys to a variety of western nations to receive this training, but ultimately the decision was made to focus on the United States.

America had never been particularly hospitable to Chinese immigrants. In fact, even as the Chinese government prepared to send several young boys abroad for their education, anti-Chinese sentiment was growing in America. Yet when American officials issued a request for Americans in the Connecticut River Valley to serve as host families for Chinese students, twice as many families volunteered as were needed. American enthusiasm for these Chinese students was widespread, not only in New England but also in diplomatic circles.

Yung Wing, Harpers Weekly, 1878

Connecticut Yankees in China and America

Although most Chinese Americans and Chinese immigrants lived in the American West, American officials chose the Connecticut River Valley as the site for this “experiment,” in part because it was the home of Yung Wing (容閎;). In 1847, Yung, who was nineteen years old, had come to America to study at Monson Academy in Massachusetts. He had then become the first Chinese student to attend and graduate from what he fondly called “Old Yale” University. While at Yale, Yung had been struck by what he called “the mental excitement” of college life as well as the “atmosphere of ambition” that he found in New Haven.

During his college years, Yung had become deeply Americanized. While he noted that “no one now talks with me in Chinese and I am fast losing...the written or literal part of my Chinese,” Yung’s turn toward English was, in some ways, the least of the changes he experienced. Rejecting the Confucian ideal of the dutiful son, Yung decided to remain in America even as his parents asked him to return to China. Yung explained that his decision to remain was based on reasons “superior to the duty which is due to a parent.” Yung’s conversion to Christianity as well as his decision to become a naturalized American citizen in 1852, while he was still in college, all point to his growing drift away from his Chinese identity.

Yet even as he became increasingly Americanized, Yung was still tied to China. Not only did he follow current events in China, such as the Taiping Rebellion, as they occurred, he also began to think about his own experiences, seeking to find in them a deeper and broader benefit for China. Although he later claimed that he developed the idea of the Chinese Educational Mission while a student at Yale, there is no evidence that Yung was exploring this idea at this time.

Despite his status as an American citizen, Yung returned to China in 1855 where he became both a translator and businessman. It was there, in 1863, that he first came into contact with Zeng Guofan. While it is unclear which man developed the idea of the Chinese Educational Mission, it was Zeng Guofan who possessed the contacts needed to bring this idea to the attention of high government officials.

Chinese Educational Mission Building, Hartford, 1887

Recruitment and Students

Finding parents willing to send their sons abroad proved to be no easy task in xenophobic China. Further complicating this was the fact that students chosen for the Chinese Educational Mission were to have had some exposure to the English language or western culture. Although the British had established missionary schools in China, the number of students meeting this qualification remained low, and in 1871 a preparatory school was opened in Shanghai to ensure that the students chosen for the mission possessed the basic skills needed to succeed in America.

By 1872, the first contingent of boys was deemed ready for America. The overall goal was to send 150 boys, with thirty boys being sent each year. These boys would receive not only what would basically be a high school education but also training in technical schools and/or professions before returning to China.

The British, whose schools had been rejected for this experiment, thought the idea had merit and would go a long way in westernizing China. But reflecting their own xenophobic tendencies, they also noted rather caustically that “China is so far behind...in intellect and morals that it will be many years before the benefit is to be derived from such small efforts.” The British also expressed some concern over the idea of Chinese officials “imbued more or less with American ideas and speaking and writing the American language.” Presumably, if the Chinese were to learn the English language and be westernized, it should be the British who were providing the education.

Anti-Chinese Wall: Stereotypes of American immigrants and laborers build a wall against Chinese immigrants, 1882, Puck

Becoming Americanized

Chinese officials feared that the students, who were adolescents, would become very Americanized – Yung himself was a case in point as to what happened when adolescents were sent abroad for their education. As a result, efforts were made to ensure that, even as these boys attended schools in the area around Hartford, their Chinese education was not neglected.

But even as the boys dutifully studied Chinese and met on various occasions to perform ceremonial rituals designed to demonstrate their obedience to the Chinese emperor, they became, just as officials had feared, increasingly Americanized. They adopted American clothes, preferred the use of English over Chinese, and even began playing the new American game of baseball. This Americanization was, in many ways inevitable, but it was also undoubtedly accelerated by having the boys live with American families and spreading the boys out over a thirty mile radius, placing them in towns near the Connecticut and Massachusetts border. Even as more boys were sent out to America each year, the proximity of the boys to one another remained limited, ensuring that their closest ties were to their American family and to their American classmates.

Ironically, even as these boys were becoming rapidly assimilated into New England society, aggression toward the Chinese who had immigrated to the West Coast was escalating, with many Euro-Americans insisting that the Chinese were incapable of assimilation. Calls to limit or even more simply prohibit immigration from China into the United States had always been common in the American West but in the mid-nineteenth century, taxes on Chinese laborers had been so high and so profitable for western governments that these calls had been limited to empty political rhetoric. However, by the 1870s, what had been simply rhetoric was now being translated into a demand for action.

Anti-Chinese riot in Denver, Frank Leslie's Illustrated News, 1880

Xenophobia

By 1881, concerns about the Chinese Educational Mission were mounting on both sides of the Pacific. These concerns were as much a comment on the Mission itself as a reflection of growing tensions between the two nations.

Rising anti-Chinese fervor had led to riots in America, which had resulted in the death of Chinese citizens, angering the Chinese government. The federal government’s insistence that they could not interfere in states where these riots had occurred simply fueled the anger of the Chinese government, as did the American government’s refusal to allow any of the Chinese students to apply to or attend the United States Military Academy at West Point or the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis.

But the Mission also foundered for reasons unrelated to Sino-American relations. Zeng Guofan’s death in 1872, just as the Mission was beginning, meant that it lost its most important champion in China early on. The two men tasked with running the Mission, Yung Wing and Ch’en Lan-Pin, also had a fundamentally different view of the Mission and its goals, with Yung Wing advocating for greater Americanization and Ch’en Lan-Pin fearing this Americanization. These differences were never resolved and the two men struggled to work together, with the result that the mission suffered from contradictory goals.

In June of 1881, the Chinese government formally and rather abruptly terminated the Chinese Educational Mission, recalling all of the boys to China.

When the experiment had been conceived, these young boys were seen as the hope of China. But, they returned in disgrace, condemned for being Americans at a time when their fellow countrymen were being pushed out of the American West for being too Chinese.